Goals

Goals. I’m scared of them. I’m scared of failure. I’m scared I put my goal out there. When I first started making running goals I was new to it all and knew that I could cut time, but the faster I got, the hard it got to drop time. I dropped ten minutes from my first half marathon to my second. I broke two hours the first time I tried. It may have been 1:59:54, but that is under. After that I ran several more half marathons and ran quite a few between 1:56 and 1:58. Two years ago I ran a 1:52 in New Orleans. I was trying to break 1:55. I crushed it. I wasn’t planning on anything that day. It just happened. It was a perfect day. The weather was warm, but also cool. The course was unbelievably flat. I felt great.

Fast forward to being 13 weeks out from my first big goal race in a long time. I received the next four weeks of my training last night and promptly freaked out this morning as I was putting it into my calendar. The speed workouts are scary. Thankfully I don’t have distance to scare me when I train for a half. I’m not sure why these workouts are so scary when I hit all of them this past month. I’ve had good speed work and good long runs, but they have all been inside. Mother Nature seems to hate runners this winter. Okay, Mother Nature hates everyone this winter, but I feel like I need more outdoor runs.

Now the fear isn’t making me doubt my goals or reconsider them. It’s just making me scared. And motivated. I really want to hit those speed workouts and really, really want that sub 1:50.

You can definitely do it! But you’re right, it’s totally scary, and even more scary to put things out there to the interwebz. Hopefully spring will be here soon and nailing the same workouts outdoors will be all the confidence you need!